#jitxt

akane kishida is in the middle because i feel like she has traits of both others, while akane (vlr) and asumu are less similar to each other...

i feel like i was overly reductive on how i wrote about akane (vlr) so SORRY about that but you get the general idea. unfortunately i have not touched zero escape in quite a while so my memory (and reading of it) is a bit fuzzy. on the other hand i feel like her writing is the most intentional, whereas the other two could've just been the writers stumbling into gold by accident. she's the least idealised in the sense that her, uh, more questionable choices, are very well known but she's probably the most unattainable feeling in my opinion. she could never be free to choose junpei if she wanted to, because the fates have decided otherwise... ("help i became too important at work" moment) ...fate and time shenanigans as this dehumanising force that never allow akane to live (or die) without consequence... there's very much this sense that by the time of vlr it's too late to really do anything for her, even though she is much longed for, searched for, and beloved. #doomedbythenarrative

asumu is fun because she never appears on screen alive, so we hear about her purely through others' eyes... 6 years after she's passed. jesus christ yall are really hung up on her, huh? (in this sense she's kind of like kinzo's depiction but taken up to eleven). obviously every account of her is biased somewhat, but we can get a general sense for the kind of person she was (with a grain of salt taken). asumu was well loved by her husband (despite his cheating) and son, and it really sounds like they all would have lived happily if she never unexpectedly died. battler probably has the strongest feelings for her but is also very biased, being that he was raised by her -- he leaves the family after feeling his father betrayed her, and their relationship is a strong part of his identity because of that. asumu is always presented as this warm, loving, caring, feminine mother, in his eyes. a symbol of motherly love, often faceless (not shown in the vn, and only sometimes with her face shown in the manga). kyrie (rudolf's second wife, who he cheated on asumu with) even emphasises asumu's femininity over her own as being a contributing factor as to why rudolf chose asumu over her (though again, take this with a grain of salt), so clearly the femininity is a part of the idealised image. asumu's death only valorises her -- immortalises the image of the perfect mother in battler's eyes and solidifies rudolf's guilt (in that he never confessed the truth of battler's parentage to her, though he thinks asumu suspected the truth anyway). kyrie's account is the only one who casts doubt on this idealised image. while the others present asumu's good traits as being incidental, a natural part of her, kyrie calls them intentional: asumu's relative femininity compared to hers, the way she refused to talk about rudolf's work (as if she were playing dumb) -- kyrie sees asumu's presentation as an intentional ploy to ensnare (lol) rudolf. obviously kyrie's account is VERY VERY VERY biased but she does at least give asumu credit for ending up where she wanted on PURPOSE. and it makes sense -- asumu did not end up the happy wife of a womaniser while being innocent to his nature. she did not end up his wife by accident, either. she has depth that is flattened by rudolf and battler's love for her, turning her into an idea of a mother more than a person

akane kishida is probably the most straightforward -- believed dead for decades is pretty damn unattainable. akane is essentially the woman who made arakawa: she's the reason why he took out his patriarch (and family), and she gave him a son -- creating both his image as arakawa the assassin and in later years, his role as a loving father (of both masato and his family). he told others about her, and how much he loved her, cared for masato thinking she had given up her life for him to live (not knowing she lived, and that masato was not that son...) and arakawa died not knowing the truth. despite the fact sawashiro could have told him at any time, that longing and regret he had for her was never resolved, and he believed it never could have been. unattainable. like asumu and her son/partner, time distorted their relationship -- akane became a memory, a regret, despite still being alive, unbeknownst to arakawa; and to ichiban, who had never known her as a mother (let's be honest, in shangri-la he has no shortage of motherly figures anyway), she is the beloved of his patriarch he holds in high regard. the idea of a birth mother doesn't quite register as reality to him, despite knowing it's true, and their relationship is shaped by that. she is a mother to others, but not to him. and it's a distortion that akane has contributed to (not to say she has done anything wrong!!) by deciding to stay in hawaii, choosing to keep living a new life instead of abandoning it for an old one (at the cost of being a mother to her son, and a partner for arakawa). to those in her old life in japan, she ceased to be a person -- she was dead and gone.

at first I found this ask difficult because I thought the differences were rather obvious: kitakata lacks "kuwana's" trauma, so in general he lacks kuwana's traits that are rooted in extreme self-hatred, drive, regret. writing his character actions and conversations from moment-to-moment overall feel similar to kuwana, just less loaded. less stakes. more casual.

kitakata drinks, but doesn't have a drinking problem. he is messy, but it's closer to laziness (or that he understands his own system of mess) than it is an indication of a bad mental state (or being so focused on his mission that he finds it difficult to care about taking care of his personal space). my goal was to write a kuwana who feels closer to the average person, so a lot of his usual traits are there, just in a more subtle form. of course, the near miss with mitsuru has affected him (it has still given him drive, though it's to change his behaviour as a teacher rather than to do anything drastic), but he is no more self-destructive than the average person. no more flawed than the average person. his thoughts, feelings, desires, strengths, weaknesses -- they are not extraordinary.

this overall concept is what guides how I write kitakata; though I think this alone doesn't fully explain what makes them different. thinking about it, i realised 2 specific differences that i think are more interesting to highlight:

firstly, kitakata is more optimistic, and has more faith/confidence in himself. funnily enough, i only realised this as i was typing up this post (lol), but this underlying belief is essential to write kitakata as a teacher, rather than as kuwana the vigilante. kuwana himself is built on a lack of optimism: he knows he has failed. he has seen the legal system fail to hold people to account. he has seen that it's happening to people all over the country. he takes such drastic measures in part because he believes there is no other way for him to make things right.

by comparison, kitakata still believes he can do good in his role as a teacher. he believes in his ability to fix things. (though I think that his near miss with mitsuru has made him hypervigilant, if anything...) kitakata has to believe that he has the power to fix things -- because if anything goes wrong again, he will probably fall apart. i don't think he consciously looks at bullying as a societal/widespread issue like kuwana does: he focuses on what's in front of him, what he can see, what he has control over. (and again, if he thinks about things going wrong, things outside of his power, i think this would hurt him very badly.) perhaps this makes his viewpoint more narrowminded and naïve compared to kuwana's, but at the end of the day, it means that he is actively striving to do good (even in small, mundane ways), which is healthier for himself and more helpful to others than kuwana's philosophy and actions. yes, kitakata is hypervigilant, and comes off as a little bit desperate in his attempts to help (see: itokura), so it's not as though this mindset is completely healthy or necessarily "better" than kuwana's point of view -- but it is a completely ordinary, understandable reaction to what he has been through. kitakata is an average person.

now, my second point about what makes them different: kitakata is more upfront and self-indulgent about his own wants and desires. i'll be frank here: kuwana hates himself. like, seriously, deeply-rooted hates himself. he has dedicated his life to his own idea of penance, a paradoxically selfish form of self-sacrifice: sacrifice nobody has asked him for, to help soothe his own guilt. without exaggeration, kuwana doesn't exist for his own pleasure. any enjoyment he experiences is merely incidental, a vice even, in his mission to help others. he does not experience pleasure because he deserves it. he experiences pleasure because he cannot help himself. (i'm not 100% onboard with the drinking-problem-kuwana headcanon though i do write it a lot lmao, but using this logic it makes a lot of sense.) in my mind, kuwana enjoys things recklessly -- because it's there, and he can. that is all.

by comparison, kitakata has no such hang up. mitsuru had an impact on him, sure, but not enough to completely obliterate his sense of self. kitakata's guilt is expressed through hypervigilance in his role as a teacher -- which doesn't extend into his personal life. he might not always communicate his desires clearly (coughsorryyagamicoough) but he is certainly not ashamed of them, and certainly not holding back. kitakata likes to read, to talk about books. he has an ego, and wants to be well liked (see: canon universe kitakata who believed that his students liked him and did as he said). kitakata doesn't have many friends, but he isn't actively sabotaging his relationships or keeping his distance either. and, of course, kitakata likes sex, and he likes handsome men like yagami. ...or at least, he is attracted to him. the rest is messy, lol 🤭. kitakata has casual sex, and has a friends-with-benefits arrangement with someone (i'm not sure how much you know about jacky, but that's why he exists. maybe i need to give the character pitch sometime...)

i don't think this changes his characterisation in an obvious way, but I think it helps to fill out kitakata's life as a person outside of his work, and understand his mindset better. his interest in yagami has no deep meaning (for instance, they don't connect through each others' pasts like in canon. i think this will come later in senseific...), and there's no underlying guilt (regret? fear?) in his involvement with yagami. they're attracted to each other: it's an ordinary, low stakes romance -- which is exactly what i was aiming for with senseific. yagami is not some vice that kitakata can't help himself from indulging in (perhaps kuwana feels that way?) but someone he spends time with and learns about. reluctantly sometimes, eagerly sometimes.